CNN Subtle Redesign
CNN has made a slight shift in th elayout of its US homepage. By moving the navigation to a horizontal type, they have made more room for their video offerings.
Unfortunately they have run out of room and had to relegate some of the sections to a drop-down listing. I’m sure they could have put RSS, CNNtoGo et al to a ‘utility’ bar and allowed those 5 sidelined sections to have presence in the main bar.
Posted: Tue 28 Mar 2006 ~ filed under General Web ;
Comments
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Christopher said:
Wow, a website that features two of my pet peeves in a single page.
Firstly, now seems like a good time to vent my spleen about using drop down lists as navigational elements. They are meant as a form element for selecting from a list of options. It shouldn’t be used as a automatic redirect. There is no need for it. Ever. It’s poor IA and confuses basis conventions.
However, since Google started using it on their image search page I guess this is going to become a “good” thing.
Also, their homepage is way wide. They are bravely ignoring the 20% of people who still have 800px screens (poor things). Also, of those that do have 1024px+ screens, who actually browses at full screen?
09:27 AM on 29 Mar 2006
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Adam said:
Not to mention it doesn’t work if you are running around with javascript turned off.
I think the resolution thing is less of an issue, strangely enough. 1024 is becoming a more defacto standard and as with other sites moving to this they have put the less important content on that side of the screen, so as those browsing with smaller viewports still get the page’s message.
However I do think that CNN should have maybe looked at a browser-width-dependent layout.11:21 AM on 29 Mar 2006
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Christopher said:
I have limited sympathy for people who turn javascript off and then wonder why things don’t work for them. While it’s a very bad idea for your main navigation to break, much of asp.net is based around javascript postbacks.
I recently had a big email discussion about the screen width issue and the broad conclusions where…
- 20% of people are still using 800px screens. That’s too much to ignore on most sites. Also, those that are still on 800px screens are likely to be the least experienced users so the least able to cope with data being off the screen.
- If something it not important enough that it’s OK that lots of your users can’t see it, it probably shouldn’t be on the page in the first place.
- People who have bigger screens don’t like to browse full screen anyway, so you’ve got less space to design in than you think you have.
- Liquid layout is good but long lines (more than 10-12 words) of text are hard to read.
- Cunning solutions to this issue are…
- http://www.whirlpool.net.au/ Dynamically adds/drops a column depending on your width (resize your browser, you’ll see it do it).
- http://www.microsoft.com/. Sniffs resolution and
renders accordingly, an 800 version and a 1024.
- http://www.collylogic.com/?/comments/redesign-notes-1-width-based-layout/
Moves the content around based on how wide your screen is. I’ve got a great admiration for this.With thanks to Dave, Mark and Will. Interesting?
01:06 PM on 29 Mar 2006
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DM said:
There are good reasons why a page can be over 800 wide, but certainly they are the exception to the rule.
But taking potshots at CNN IA and design is firmly shooting fish in a barrel. Don’t get me wrong the dropdown in the navigation is awful, but pretty much everything else on the page is awful too. It’s too crowded, it’s too long, it’s just too much. That navigation bar isn’t permanent, every link on it goes to a site that looks different. But lets not judge too much can you imagine how different interest groups needed to be pleased with the design of the page. Nightmare.
Just makes me appreciate the genius of http://www.bbc.co.uk/ more.
02:18 PM on 29 Mar 2006
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Adam said:
DM: I agree, CNN’s web team probably have a terrible time juggling stakeholders, but if a site is unusable or difficult to navigate then everyone is going to lose out.
Why shouldn’t big sites have good IA and design? The BBC site always gets cited as a pillar of the web community by developers and the public. Sure it is difficult to do well, but the CNN nav bar now just feels thrown together, and I think is harder to read than their vertical version.04:23 PM on 29 Mar 2006
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Christopher said:
> There are good reasons why a page can be over 800 wide,
> but certainly they are the exception to the rule.I’m trying to think of one. Displaying lots of tabular data? It’s got to be in some environment where you’re sure of your user’s machines.
03:51 PM on 30 Mar 2006
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